The Concept of Surrender

[BKBrawler]

I probably always look at things from a PBEM player's POV. With PBEM, I don't mind if somebody surrenders quickly.

Matter of taste I guess, but I would say a quick PBEM surrender is even worse because you spent 3 coins for what? a half turn of a game? Not what I'm looking for...

About that a player getting lucky with risky moves, I always like a challenge. It is not exactly a coin flip. Yes they might have 50% (imo even less) chance to have the advantage after the first round.

Nothing wrong with making risky openings. It can drive an opponent nuts when it hits, but that's definitely part of the game and adds a level of variety and enjoyment to the game I think. The problem isn't the play, its the quick surrender if it doesn't work that is a problem for me. I just had a recent league game where my opponent, with a solid record, decided to mix it up and open with a Russian Triple. It failed for the most part and I think we both kinda knew where the game would go from there. But he hung tough, played it out to the very end with numerous gambits to try and fight back into it. He lost, but the game was a very fun one. That's the right way to play I think.

But I didn't surrender quickly either when things didn't go well.

And you have the same mentality. You get it, but not everyone does.

They are paying GTO to have some entairtainment, and they feel they are entairtained this way.

But so is their opponent, and I think ts a bit disrespectful of their time and interest in playing to have a quick surrender "strategy" if things don't go well.

But I think the best way to stop this kind of behavior would be if GTO changed their ranking system.

Would be nice...

[kemal81]

I probably always look at things from a PBEM player's POV. With PBEM, I don't mind if somebody surrenders quickly.

Matter of taste I guess, but I would say a quick PBEM surrender is even worse because you spent 3 coins for what? a half turn of a game? Not what I'm looking for...

I should have said from a player's POV who subscribed to PBEM. But yeah it would suck if you are paying per game. I pay my $3.95/month so this kind of behaviors don't bother me. But still surrender stat is not the solution to this problem as one can wait until the 3rd round and then surrender. It's still good to have it but ultimately changing the ranking rules as you agreed with me can help a lot. And one should go down in levels if they start losing a lot. Adding a standings table, where everybody sees where they stand in the rankings would be nice, too.

[bleslie88]

My understanding . It is to enhance game play and not ruin games...

Which means if someone is way overly aggressive - and resigns because of bad dice - then he is heavier penalized then someone who plays out at least 2 turns...

Also someone who has a high surrender tally - would in my books be someone to avoid if looking for a good game.

[roarkish]

Yes it is a loss but I think it only adds to the surrender column after turn 3.

I think you mean it adds to the surrender column before turn 3.

So can someone clear this up? Is it before turn 3 or after turn 3?

The reason for my Original Post, and the reason that I care about about surrender tallies, is that I played several games in a row where the person I was playing surrendered after the dice turnout in turn one. I agree with several posters that if someone believes they can't win, then why prolong the inevitable...OK, yes I agree with that. BUT NOT AT TURN ONE! I agree with the posters who say that it is about "the good game" and not just winning....Yes, I have had several games that I lost that were fantastically fun. And to the posters who say that the surrender tally doesn't matter because you still get the win.......

That is my original point. The several games that I played in a row where my opponents kept surrendering took over an hour. That was an hour of quality game time that I could have been playing with someone who will keep trying till things are hopeless. So looking at the surrender tally and seeing double digit numbers means I will stay away and hope for a player that will give it their all and not count on the die luck in turn one.

Sooooo......can anyone know the GTO policy on the surrender tallies? After turn three? Before turn three? ???

[RobEng]

Brawler is correct; it is before turn 3. The rationale for this is that after turn 3 we recognize the departure as a concession.

[kemal81]

And to the posters who say that the surrender tally doesn't matter because you still get the win.......

Not sure what those dots are for but for me surrender tally doesn't matter. When I look at someone's record I never check their number of surrenders. But if you and others have problem with people for surrendering too early then I am for GTO looking into it and discourage people from doing it. However surrender tally is not the way to go imo. They can wait till the 3rd round if they want to and waste even more of time. The way to fix this is by changing the ranking system as I explained in my earlier post. The current ranking system is so forgiving against losses and that's why people don't mind taking lots if them. Especially right after you reached a new level, you can have the next 20 games all loses and still won't go down in points. For someone who is worried about going up in levels and not win %, taking losses don't mean a lot. That's why they don't mind 1st round surrender.

[Sammog]

I don't know anyone who looks at somebodies "level" in order to gauge how good/bad that player is. People look at wins/losses and shear number of games played. Surrenders are different though. They tell me the style of my opponent usually. I'd recommend doing away with "Points" and "Level" unless it was to be defined on how good your opponents are. But that'd be almost impossible to retroactively fit without wiping people's records, which would annoy some folk. So my suggestion would be to eliminate the points section and just have records based on win/losses. But then again, most of us don't look at points/exp/level... so it's not exactly doing any harm? :/

[UtzChips]

Sammog,

Take a look at the way the experience point system is setup know at this link:
http://www.gametableonline.com/rankingsystem.php

You get there from the home page, selecting "help" on the left hand side of the page & then ranking system.

You will see that there is an "XP modifier" based upon the difference in ranking between 2 players. [this involves 1v1 games]
If an Expert plays someone ranked 10 to 19 levels lower than himself, he only gets 25 points for the win, instead of 50.

On the opposite side of the coin, if the weaker player won, he would get 75 pts instead of 50.

This prevents the "inflation" of people's rankings.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

If it did, we'd have a pretty darn good ranking system, other than the fact that I can play a 2v2 game with an Expert as a partner, follow his instructions, get a win on his coattails & earn 62 experience points instead of only 50 like I do when I win a 1v1 game.

[Sammog]

oh thanks utz! Well then I'm out of suggestions XD

[BKBrawler]

A rating system like chess would be very welcome, but the current system isn't exactly terrible either. When I look for an opponent, I look at three things:

1) Win/loss record. Generally, the greater the ratio of wins to losses is a pretty good indicator of skill level. Even if they are a noob-hunter, or a cheesedog as someone else put it on another thread, the player would still have to be pretty good to be able to consistently dominate less experienced players, though not always, so this is only one factor I look at.
2) Surrender tally. As mentioned, the higher the tally the more wary I am of the player, which is especially true if their win/loss record is closer to .500. It seems to indicate to me this is a player who plays very risky openings and if it doesn't hit they surrender. Not a fan of that.
3) Kudos. It hasn't been mentioned but this is actually one of the key indicators for me. If a player has several hundred games under their belt and only a few kudos, that's a warning sign for me. Of course, some players are just a bit withdrawn, while others may not speak the same language as the majority of the players here, but there are still a number of talented, experienced players here who are fairly generous with kudos. When you play for awhile at this site they become known to you. So if I don't see kudos from someone like bb82 or rem400, I wonder. Also, after playing for awhile on this site you become familiar with the various experienced players. I'd say I know and have played probably 90%+ of the experts here. If I see kudos from a bunch of players I don't recognize, there's a good chance the opponent is a noob-hunter generally to be avoided.

I don't think any of these factors individually is enough to truly judge how skilled a player may be, but collectively I think I've had pretty good luck ferreting out those who may not be the type of player I'm looking for. Only rarely do I get burned, so the current system, while not perfect, tends to be good enough for what I need.

[kemal81]

I don't know anyone who looks at somebodies "level" in order to gauge how good/bad that player is. People look at wins/losses and shear number of games played. Surrenders are different though. They tell me the style of my opponent usually. I'd recommend doing away with "Points" and "Level" unless it was to be defined on how good your opponents are. But that'd be almost impossible to retroactively fit without wiping people's records, which would annoy some folk. So my suggestion would be to eliminate the points section and just have records based on win/losses. But then again, most of us don't look at points/exp/level... so it's not exactly doing any harm? :/

Others may not look at levels, but I am sure that there must be people who finds it satisfactory that they go up in levels because they get lots of wins even if that means they are getting losses even more. Someone like that will not mind surrendering quickly.
I am still for changing the ranking system. Nobody should go up in levels that easily. You don't have to completely wipe out points. However maximum starting point can be something like say 8000. If they are still getting wins they can increase their points above that. No disrespect to anyone but I find points like 30000 to be over inflated. Just because someone was here a lot earlier than others shouldn't mean they should have more points. Having a ranking system like chess is the fairest way to go. It will also take some time until people get the right points they deserve. You can be Bobby Fischer (RIP, greatest chess player of all time) at chess.com and if it is the first time he opens an account there without telling anyone he is Bobby Fischer, he would start with 1200 points. But the ranking system is so efficient that after playing some time he would have the points he truly deserves. If that annoys some people who had high scores initially and they start to go down because of the new ranking system, only thing I can tell them is they should accept the truth.

[UtzChips]

Let's say both you and I have 10,000 in experience points, however, your record is 300 wins and 200 losses & mine is 200 wins and 500 losses.

Now, I don't know how many wins/losses it would it take to get 10k in points, but for this exercise it doesn't matter.

What matters is that you have 300 wins out of 500 games for a 60% win rate & I have 200 wins out of 700 games for a 28.57% win rate.

The XPs don't really matter. It's the win rate & you can tell that you are the better player because if you divide your 300 wins into 10,000 points you get 33.33 & my 200 wins into 10k = 50. This means my losses outweigh my wins the point where each one of my wins accounts for 50 of my XPs while each of your wins accounts for only 33.33.

Now, imagine if you will for a moment, that the "XP modifier" works & that as you go up in the levels that you continue to try & play players of a lesser strength than you to inflate your win rate, while I play players rated at least as high as myself or better..........

Now what happens to the total XP points? Interesting isn't it!

We need the XP modifier working, is what we need.

Yes, some of the bonus points that you get, like 500 pts for every 50th win, once you have won 100 games may be a little inflationary, HOWEVER, you fix that "XP Modifier" and you have the start of a pretty decent system.

One cannot look at the XP points like a chess rating system. I thought that it was the answer, however, you have top notch players on here and if they play a mid level intermediate player for the fun of it & the intermediate player doesn't mind the loss because he/she gains experience, the point adjustment [should the intermediate player win] is not so bad, because the expert only loses 25 points but the intermediate player gains 75.

Actually, I think the point modifier should be adjusted up some to give the lower rated player even more points.

Now if you go to a chess ranking system, the expert is going to lose around 32 points, instead of 16 when he plays an evenly matched opponent and the lower player gains 32 points. And, to make matters worse, when the expert wins, he only gains 2 points. I do believe that you are going to find a drop in the number of experts willing to spend their time playing inferior opponents.

The main problem with this on GTO is that it discourages experts from playing lower ranked players and giving them a chance to gain experience. Remember, when the expert beats the lower rated player, he only gains 12.5 points.
But, only with the XP Modifier working! That would put the brakes on the inflated ratings somewhat.

Furthermore, in the chess world, Grandmasters, Masters & Experts, in large tournaments, seldom find themselves paired against a player rated a lot lower than them. I'm talking about a 2200 player getting paired against a 1400 player. Just doesn't happen that often. And you can forget about a 1400 player ever player a 2500+ player.

[Sammog]

Others may not look at levels, but I am sure that there must be people who finds it satisfactory that they go up in levels because they get lots of wins even if that means they are getting losses even more. Someone like that will not mind surrendering quickly.

This is a good point. I hadn't really considered this. Although I think it's absurd and ridiculous that anyone would function like this, I understand the idea behind it.

[rockismyreligion]

I probably always look at things from a PBEM player's POV. With PBEM, I don't mind if somebody surrenders quickly. I usually have 5 games going at a time. As soon as one of them disappears from current games, I open up another game. About that a player getting lucky with risky moves, I always like a challenge. It is not exactly a coin flip. Yes they might have 50% (imo even less) chance to have the advantage after the first round, but usually players who do those kind of openings, don't know the game very well. I would lick my wounds after the first round and keep on fighting. And 50% of the time I would turn the game around and still win it. If somebody makes that kind of risky opening against me, they have about 20% or less chance to win it. I used to make risky openings when I was a noob and a level 10+ player accepted my challenge. Because I figured if I play it in a conventional way I have about 0% chance to win. But if I make a risky opening and get away with it then I will have better chance. But I didn't surrender quickly either when things didn't go well. I know so many players here are so focused on their wins. Some of them don't even care about win %, but only on total number of wins. GTO even rewards these players by making them the featured player. You can play 150 games in a month, and if you win 50 of them, you might have your name on the home page. And the way they can play that many games in one month is if they surrender quickly as soon as they have the disadvantage. So if some of you are against this kind of behavior, then yeah having surrender stats make sense. But me, I really don't care if that's what makes them happy. They are paying GTO to have some entairtainment, and they feel they are entairtained this way.
But I think the best way to stop this kind of behavior would be if GTO changed their ranking system. One shouldn't be a level 15+ player while they have less wins than losses in their last 50 games. Right now it takes 2 losses to erase the points earned by one win. And also sometimes you don't even lose a point, because once you reach a level you never go down. That's why people don't mind quick surrenders. All they need is enough wins and they can go up in levels.

I know that when I used to play many PBEM games at once, I appreciated ending a game that was a foregone conclusion.

[kemal81]

The XPs don't really matter. It's the win rate & you can tell that you are the better player because if you divide your 300 wins into 10,000 points you get 33.33 & my 200 wins into 10k = 50. This means my losses outweigh my wins the point where each one of my wins accounts for 50 of my XPs while each of your wins accounts for only 33.33..

I don't consider win % very reliable either. It's still more reliable than points we get thru current system. However what should matter more is whom one got those wins from. Say 2 players played 100 games and they have 60 wins so they 60% win rate. But one player mostly played against level 20+ players, and the other mostly played against level 10- players. Under the current ranking system both will have about same points. Actually it is even possible for the second player to have more points, if he did the smart thing and took the losses right after level increase, as one may not lose points because under the current rules you never go down once you reach a level. Under a ranking system like chess the first player will be way ahead of the second player in points. It is more fair way of ranking players. And it will discourage behaviors like noob hunting, quick surrendering or making very risky openings.
There is also one problem with win % that nobody has mentioned yet. What if a player first started here not knowing the game very well and initially got lots of losses. After a while they got better and better and started to increase their wins. You look at their record and you see that they have 50% win rate. However what you don't see is in their last say 50 games, they won 80% of the time. Would you still consider this player a 50% player a record that you see, or 80% player a record you are not able to see. With chess like ranking system you will still not see the 80% win rate in last 50 games however this will reflect to one's points and make them go up in levels.

Now if you go to a chess ranking system, the expert is going to lose around 32 points, instead of 16 when he plays an evenly matched opponent and the lower player gains 32 points. And, to make matters worse, when the expert wins, he only gains 2 points. I do believe that you are going to find a drop in the number of experts willing to spend their time playing inferior opponents.

The main problem with this on GTO is that it discourages experts from playing lower ranked players and giving them a chance to gain experience. Remember, when the expert beats the lower rated player, he only gains 12.5 points.
But, only with the XP Modifier working! That would put the brakes on the inflated ratings somewhat.

Furthermore, in the chess world, Grandmasters, Masters & Experts, in large tournaments, seldom find themselves paired against a player rated a lot lower than them. I'm talking about a 2200 player getting paired against a 1400 player. Just doesn't happen that often. And you can forget about a 1400 player ever player a 2500+ player.

This is exactly why we need chess like ranking system. This way, one plays players their own level mostly. When you have a noob vs expert game, expert will win 95% of the time, and the noob will not learn anything. If the expert doesn't earn enough points, then he won't do bottom fishing anymore. And for someone who just joined the site, but knows the game at the level of an expert, they might still start as a noob but in no time they will go up in levels and they can play the other experts very soon. Under the current ranking system a player like that maybe has to play at least 100 games so that they can prove to high level players that they are strong players that worth playing.
And it's not like it will still be impossibe for an expert to play noob. Anybody can still challenge anybody.